Some specific questions about Article Syndication

A questions just popped into my mind: do you give out to syndication all the articles that you have on one website?

If yes, then wouldn't you face the following problem: The reader comes to your website only to find that you do not have articles that she/he didn't read because all of your articles were syndicated(on the website where the reader comes from)? Why would the reader come again to your site then ?

Or do you post other articles on your websites that are not syndicated?

Why can't you become one of them ?


Why do you say that?
Really, why ?

That's why most article syndication experts on this forum recommend doing things very differently from this. They usually recommend writing an article of about 1000 words, chock full of useful and engaging content and a resource box that is not a hard sell.

The first person I contacted totally said yes. However, I will at times spend all day writing an article. I can write about 100 words a minute, but when it comes to writing these kinds of articles I take my time, research, research, research, read, re-read, re-write, and make sure that I don't send it out until I feel like it's a masterpiece. I take a look at the structure, flow, feel, content, information, facts, etc.

S/he's discussing it in terms of backlinks, apparently: that's not the same type of approach which all of us here, so successfully building our full-time businesses in this way, think of as "article marketing" at all: it leads to a business which is largely dependent on search engines for its primary traffic, and is perhaps ultimately only ever one algorithm change away from a disaster.

As explained here (and in so many other threads), article marketing is a traffic generation method in its own right - not only "not primarily a system for getting search engine traffic" but in fact something that could still be done if Google de-indexed all one's sites tomorrow.

Also, I hope s/he'll excuse the observation that the references above to "500-word articles" and "hard sell resource boxes" are not compatible with any form of article syndication I've ever encountered, and hardly seem to me like a plausible business model. Successful syndication and 500-word articles with hard-selling resource-boxes are mutually exclusive realities, and it's hardly a surprise, to me at least, that that experience proved entirely non-viable.

Clearly, it's entirely true that to build a business in this way, one needs to be able either to write or to buy the necessary articles. As against that, of course, far smaller numbers of them are typically needed to attract large quantities of highly targeted traffic.

It's only a fictional niche - not a real one. I don't disclose my niches, and sometimes use "cauliflower soup recipes" as an example of a niche for illustrative purposes in discussions. I did have an actual niche, and an actual article, in mind when I wrote that post, but it isn't quite "cauliflower soup recipes" and that wasn't quite the title of the article I'd written. Apologies for any confusion.

(Sorry for sounding paranoid, but some experience of such discussions here has taught me that if I use anything too close to a real title/quotation from an article, people will put it into Google and try to find my sites and I prefer to make that difficult to do because one or two of my niches are really non-competitive and I'd rather keep them that way ).

I'm not sure quite how "stingy" that would be, actually ... I'd perhaps prefer that for the first paragraph than the end? I'm not sure what a real sting in the tail would be for a soup recipe article, but that's my own fault for choosing a silly example ...

What I really like to do is to try to finish the article on a note that leads naturally to the link to my landing page, which potential customers will want to click to find out what they're missing, but which publishers don't think is so obviously salesy that they're uncomfortable reproducing it on their sites. (And I'm not trying to rank any of my sites for the keyword "click here"! :p :rolleyes.

That's the expression I was looking for to illustrate my point. Thanks.

Just an observation, but I have noticed that the people who always write forum posts in the same way they write articles, reports, white papers, or whatever, are the ones who are the most serious about their business efforts.

The way you write a forum post is often the only chance another person has of judging your writing ability. I personally write all my forum posts as if I were being paid to do so (I'm not, of course). I feel it's a good discipline well worth maintaining.

Alexa's forum posts are invariably impeccable, but isn't that exactly what you would expect, given that her business activity is article marketing through syndication?

John.

This is an interesting take on the challenges of article syndication. This will be true of any form of content marketing...People will take it spin it and try to sell it as their own to get a backlink from somewhere.

But, I don't care. I am pretty sure that spun articles are not going to be published on quality blogs or sites and compete with me for publication. Nor do I think they will steal any of the traffic that my articles will produce.

Nor do I think that someone stealing my articles will put together the relationships that I have in my niche.

In short, I'd rather produce more content than chase some IM hack. They build backlinks while I build a business...

Also, I would agree that article syndication is very difficult - for people who cannot or will not produce a decent article. Call me naive though, I think most people can, if they put their mind to it and work to improve their writing.

To build my lists.

I'm selling ClickBank products (mostly). You can't do that without building lists.

My lists are my businses's primary asset.

I send them emails on days 1, 3, 6, 10, 15 and thereafter every 5 days (sometimes every 6 days).

I send them emails to build relationships with them (normally one-way relationships, admittedly, but that doesn't matter). So that I can provide valuable and interesting information to them. So that they'll come to respect my knowledge (and my site) of that niche. So that they'll trust me. So that when I recommend a ClickBank (or other) product to them, they'll at the very least be interested to know what it is that's so good that "their expert" is recommending it.

And, yes, to get them back to my website.

And to do product promotions (usually in one email in three, but not occupying the whole email).

It doesn't matter, because you can't make many affiliate sales without them.

Actually they're terribly cheap, for what they do. The proportion of your takings that they charge isn't even worth talking about.

Aweber is charging according to what he's sending to his subscribers, not the number of visitors his site gets. (Are you sure those figures are right? They certainly seem extraordinarily mismatched, at first glance? But who knows ... maybe his traffic quality leaves rather a lot to be desired, or something?)

Definitely not.

I have an incentivized opt-in, offering them something in exchange for their email address, but no pop-ups. For all the reasons explained here.

My refund rate of ClickBank products is very low, thanks. I sell about 500 per month and have very few refunds. What determines the refund-rate is primarily how the products are pre-sold.

This subject's widely discussed in other threads, but a lot of people make the mistake of imagining that ClickBank's 60-day guarantee means that a lot of people are going to refund. That doesn't have to be so. What it really means to me is that the products are going to be easy to sell.

It's true there are 2 or 3 specific niches which have slightly higher-than-average refund rates, but those are niches I keep away from for many other reasons, anyway.

I do sell some physical products that fit my niches, too, kind of as "extras", but collectively they're harder going for me than ClickBank products.

Yes.

I'm very happy to have those on my list, if they've been attracted to my site by one of my articles, because long experience has taught me that I can sell to them. If they liked an article enough to come to my site and opt in, then they'll like my emails enough to trust my recommendations and buy things. That's the theory, anyway.

Yes - all automated.

Yes. (There are some other good autoresponder companies, too, but stay away from "free autoresponders" - I don't mean companies like GetResponse who don't charge for your first 100 subscribers: they're also a good company but not really a "free autoresponder").

I send them what I've told them I'll send them (a big point, this - and one overlooked by many people, perhaps partly because it sounds so obvious), which is further information about the niche, discussions of the subjects I've mentioned on my landing page, more about what the "free report" started covering (the purpose of the free report is to ensure that they open and read my emails), further valuable content in the niche, many links back to my site (I want to get them used to clicking my links expecting and finding something of value) and - of course - product promotions.

That might qualify, yes ... it varies a lot from niche to niche.

Sorry, don't know this. My guess is that there'll be many. I know that some books/courses recommend squeeze-pages specifically, but I split-tested them for 4 of my niches, for 6 months each, and I now don't use them at all, myself.

Ah, I see. I suspect, then, that there's a mismatch between the customers' expectations and what the product actually delivers. (There can be many different reasons for that arising, though - and it isn't necessarily entirely the fault of the product). This is one of the many reasons I prefer being an affiliate: your fortunes are not tied to the continued success of any specific, individual product at all, and you can change the products you promote pretty easily without needing to create a new one.

Yes, maybe so. I don't promote specifically to teens, myself, for quite a variety of reasons. I hadn't really thought much about that reason, but it sounds right to me.

Really? I think you may have read that I don't like PM's from people I don't know asking me to review their WSO's in exchange for a free copy (which is perfectly true, but I'm hardly alone there! :p ). I do sometimes reply more quickly to threads than I do to my PM's, though.

No prob ... I know what you mean. Stuff can be, sometimes, but it can also be pretty hard to find.